American Somali terror recruiter may have been arrested in the Netherlands

Although the FBI isn’t confirming it, a key person wanted in the Somali missing youth case that we have been following for a year is under arrest in the Netherlands reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  He was believed to be the recruiter and financier of the “youths” (former refugees*) who went to Africa to join the Jihad.   The still unnamed suspect was caught at an asylum center—what a surprise!  Hat tip: an ever-watchful friend from Tennessee

A 43-year-old Somali man from Minneapolis was arrested this week in the Netherlands for allegedly financing the recruitment of up to 20 young Somali men from Minnesota to train and fight with terrorists in their homeland.

The arrest appears to be the most significant development yet in one of the most far-reaching counterterrorism investigations since 9/11.

The identity of the man, who was arrested Sunday at an asylum-seeker’s center 45 miles northeast of Amsterdam, was not released. But Special Agent E.K. Wilson of the Minneapolis FBI office confirmed Tuesday that the man was arrested in connection with the ongoing counterterrorism investigation that began here when young men began disappearing in 2007.

“We are aware of this individual and of this arrest. And it is tied to our ongoing Minneapolis investigation,” Wilson said. “We are and have been working closely with Dutch authorities through our legal attaché office in Brussels and coordinating with the Department of Justice Office of International Affairs.”

Dutch prosecutors said in a statement that the man lived in Minneapolis before leaving the United States in November 2008 and arrived in the Netherlands about one month later.

The statement said American authorities asked for the man’s arrest and are seeking to have him extradited. Wilson said he could not confirm or deny that.

According to the Dutch statement, U.S. prosecutors suspect the man of bankrolling the purchase of weapons for Islamic extremists and helping other Somalis travel to Somalia in 2007 and 2008.

[.....] 

At the heart of the federal investigation has been the question of who recruited the men and financed their return to their homeland to fight.

Wilson would not comment on the significance of Sunday’s arrest. But it is apparently the first to involve someone in an alleged leadership role.

Read the whole Star Tribune story, it’s a good summary of where the case stands now.

* The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened, but thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.

Going bonkers in Britain over genetic testing of asylum seekers

From the Associated Press:

LONDON — Britain is using genetic tests on some African asylum seekers in an effort to catch those who are lying about their nationality, drawing criticism from scientists and provoking outrage from rights groups.

The United Kingdom Border Agency launched the pilot project in September amid suspicions there might be a large number of asylum applicants lying about their home countries. An agency spokesman said Britain was the only country using genetic tests in this way.

Experts, however, say the tests are based on flawed science and there’s no way genetic swabs can provide meaningful evidence regarding nationality.

[....]

The government argues such tests can provide valuable – although not conclusive – evidence in assessing whether or not asylum seekers are telling the truth about their country of origin.

So far, the tests are being used only on people who claim to be from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda and Sudan, though if successful, officials say the plan could be rolled out further.

Of course they want to find out if the African is from a country where they might be persecuted and in danger or not. 

Last year, nearly 26,000 people applied in Britain; of the more than 19,000 cases where decisions were made, 3,725, or 19 percent, were granted asylum. People from more repressive or chaotic countries, like Sudan or Somalia, often have a better chance of gaining asylum than those from more stable countries like Kenya.

Definitely read the whole story.  It also tells us that there is other testing that may be done and how the tests can be used to track terrorists.

Besides genetic tests, British officials are also performing isotope analysis of asylum seekers’ hair and nail samples. Scientists can look at the composition of certain elements like oxygen or strontium in hair and nails to see where a person has been.

How is this for a brilliant move?  NOT!

In a landmark decision, the European Court of Human Rights recently ordered Britain to destroy nearly 1 million DNA samples and fingerprints on its database – samples taken from children, people who had never been charged or people acquitted of crimes.

This is the most interesting section of the AP story.  Our very own Secretary of Homeland Security hasn’t given any of this any thought!   Doesn’t she know that the State Department suspended all family reunification  from Africa after discovering widespread fraud through DNA testing more than a year ago and that they are in the process of revising the whole program?  Most of us are expecting that DNA testing WILL BE EMPLOYED for at least family reunfication when the so-called P-3 program is reopened.  Napolitano acts like she doesn’t know about all this!

Concerned about potential fraud, the Bush administration launched a pilot DNA testing project in 2007 to vet applicants to a program that allows family members of African refugees already in the United States to join them.

The project, which wrapped up in March 2008, found an extremely high rate of fraud – 87 percent – among applicants claiming to be related to each other, the State Department said, and the resettlement program was suspended until those concerns could be addressed. The U.S. does not use genetic tests to try to prove nationality.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in London on Thursday that the U.S. has other ways of probing a person’s country of origin, such as testing language skills.

“I haven’t thought about it,” she said of the British attempt to match DNA to nationality. “We have a variety of ways we can use when we think someone is not telling the truth.”

Oh, and what might those be?

Got guts? France certainly does as it launches national pride campaign

To combat Islamic fundamentalism, the French government has announced a campaign to remind citizens that they are French!  I love it!  When are we going to be as gutsy as the French?    From the Mail  thanks to Islam in Action:

France is to adopt a series of measures to ‘reaffirm pride’ in the country and combat Islamic fundamentalism.

They include everybody receiving lessons in the nation’s Christian history and children singing the national anthem.

Using words which infuriated ethnic minority groups and Socialist opponents, immigration minister Eric Besson also said he wanted ‘foreigners to speak better French’.

He called for all recent arrivals to be monitored by ‘Republican godfathers’, charged with helping immigrants to integrate better.

His proposed measures contrast sharply with the situation in Britain where ‘citizenship education’ centres on multicultural diversity.

M Besson, who was born in the former French protectorate of Morocco, suggested a debate on national identity’ entitled ‘What does it mean to be French?’

He also reignited the debate about face and body-covering Muslim veils, saying they should definitely be banned.

As well as providing civic lessons for adults – including classes about the country’s Christian history and liberal political institutions – the government will encourage school children to sing the national anthem at least once a year.

They are deporting Muslims too!

Mr Besson defended a decision to send illegal Afghan immigrants – all of them Muslim – back to Kabul on charter flights organised in conjunction with the British government last week, saying there would be many more.

More than 21,000 people have been deported from France this year – with 27,000 the ultimate target, said Mr Besson.

LOL! Europe wishes to emulate Australian immigration policy

Oh my gosh, where has this author been?  Hasn’t he (or those European leaders) been reading the Australian press lately about all the controversy over immigration policy, Muslims, terrorist arrests, boat people and so forth downunder.   Dear Mr. Becks, just check out our Australia category here.

According to European polls and many EU officials, the issue of uncontrolled Muslim immigration into Europe has been a policy maker’s disaster. It is a controversial if patriotic standpoint but one which could benefit from the study of how Australia handles the question.

Australia is held in high regard by many European lawmakers for the apparent success and sustainability of its immigration policy.

The most admired principles are those that see Australia effectively select its immigrants, based on family and government cohesion, skill levels and that there is, in general, public support for the policy.

Australia has had well documented instances of ‘boat people’ arriving from Asia but the numbers are miniscule when compared to the migrant levels seen across Europe. Australia has maintained a consistent approach to protecting its borders which is something which most European countries aspire to but ongoing conflict about a common policy agreement has made the task all the more difficult. Muslim immigration continues to polarise public opinion in most European theatres.

Read on.

Australia might not be as bad as Europe yet, but someone is in dreamland if they think Australia has a solution to the Muslim immigration problem!

Kevin Myers: term ‘asylum-seekers’ rings all the liberal bells

Irish columnist, Kevin Myers, has a good column in the Belfast Telegraph yesterday pointing out the idiotic ‘diversity uber alles’ suicidal actions of western countries happily transforming illegal aliens into ‘asylum seekers’ and welcoming them.  Meanwhile, many countries in the world are off limits to white people.

Whereas it would have been possible for Caucasians to have visited almost anywhere in the globe in relative safety 25 years ago, there are at least a dozen countries where kidnap and or death would be the immediate reward for the white outsider. |This barren crescent reaches round much of the globe and includes large parts, or all, |of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi, Somalia, Sudan, Egypt, Algeria, Gaza and Morocco.

And Western Europe, in all its sublime intelligence, has made a point of accepting huge numbers of immigrants from these countries. Wherever they were not accepted as ‘immigrants’, they promptly turned themselves into ‘asylum-seekers’, a legal camouflage that was promptly accepted by a generally witless media.

‘Illegal immigrant’ gets no tearful headlines, but ‘asylum-seeker’ rings all the liberal bells so that suddenly ‘asylum-seekers’ they then became.

Saudi and Somali ‘asylum-seekers’ have been a primary source of terrorist activity in Britain. In Holland, Moroccans ditto.

He asks, when is the last time you saw some Muslim country invite diverse peoples to come live among them?

This is all part of a collapse of cultural and ethnic self-confidence in Europe. No Asian, African or Arab city feels the necessity to complete its cosmopolitan image by importing hundreds of thousands of foreigners.

Tokyo, Peking, Bombay, Madras, Cairo and Lagos are ethnically pretty much the same as they were half a century ago.

But in Europe, it is now obligatory for any self-respecting modern city to have a large proportion of its population from other continents. This is called ‘diversity’.

And an ideologically multicultural state like Britain has set itself ‘diversity targets’, which reward visible displays of ethnic difference and punish their opposite.

Read it all.

Along these same lines, see Brenda Walker’s VDARE article on how chicken Europe has become in the face of Muslim immigration, here.

By the way, we just told you two days ago that asylum-seekers are on the rise, here.  Most are from Muslim countries seeking entry into western countries.

UNHCR criticizes UK, Denmark and Sweden for returning Iraqi asylum seekers to Iraq

Not unexpected, from the BBC:

The United Nations refugee agency has criticised European countries for sending asylum seekers back to central Iraq, an area it considers unsafe.

It said people fleeing the region needed international protection because of security concerns and what it called “serious human rights abuses”.

The call from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees came after Britain tried to deport 44 men to Baghdad.

Denmark and Sweden were also cited as having forced Iraqi refugees to return.

Meanwhile Great Britain is in its longest recession on record, here.  Hint to America and the Obama Administration too!  Welfare states can only take care of the world’s immigrants and refugees for so long before the money runs out.

Asylum applications rise: Iraqis, Afghans, Somalis top list

The UNHCR has released the latest figures on asylum applications and no surprise the numbers are up.   Asylees are people who have left their home country, enter another country and file for asylum claiming they would be in danger if returned to their homeland.   In the US asylees receive all the benefits that refugees are given and we have hundreds (thousands?) of Immigration lawyers waiting to take their cases.

GENEVA, October 22 (UNHCR) – Asylum applications in industrialized nations rose by 10 percent in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2008, according to the UN refugee agency’s provisional statistics released today. A total of 185,000 asylum claims were filed in the opening six months of this year across 38 European countries, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and The Republic of Korea.

Iraq remains the top country of origin of the asylum applicants (13,200 claims) for the fourth consecutive year. Afghans (12,000 claims) and Somalis (11,000 claims) are the second and third largest groups as security conditions continue to deteriorate in large parts of their home countries. The other main countries of origin are China, Serbia (including Kosovo), the Russian Federation, Nigeria, Mexico, Zimbabwe, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

As a region, Europe received 75 percent of all asylum applications although the United States remained the single largest recipient with 13 percent of all applications filed in industrialized nations (23,700, UNHCR estimate). France ranks as the second recipient nation with 10 percent of all claims (19,400), followed by Canada (18,700), the United Kingdom (17,700) and Germany, ranked fifth (12,000).

Wilders protesters: “Islam will dominate the world”

Readers should go to Atlas Shrugs and see the photos Pamela Geller posted yesterday from Muslim protests against Geert Wilders.  For background, see Judy’s post from earlier this week, here.

Besides “Islam will dominate the world. Freedom can go to hell,” see “Shariah for the Netherlands.  Islam will be superior,” and “Shariah the true solution.”   Plant those photos firmly in your mind and be sure to  send them to your friends.  Remember we are only a few years behind Europe with Muslim immigration.  These Islamic supremacists are not kidding.

Judy and I were fortunate to hear Geert Wilders speak in Washington, DC earlier this year, here.

Britain deports Iraqi asylum seekers

Update October 18th:   More details on this story at the New York Times, here.

Update October 17th:  This is very confusing.  It seems that when the plane landed in Baghdad some of the returned asylum seekers got off the plane and others were told they must return to Great Britain, here.

Just as we in the US are getting ready to resettle possibly tens of thousands of additional Iraqi refugees (more on that in the morning), Britain joins Denmark now in loading them up and sending them back because violence is down.

From Al Jazeera:

Britain has forcibly sent 39 Iraqi asylum seekers back to Baghdad, a refugee group has said.

The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees (Ifir) has raised concern over the welfare of the asylum seekers once they arrive in Iraq, which has seen a continuation of deadly suicide bombings in recent months.

The Ifir said 39 people had been deported on a specially chartered Air Italy flight that left London’s Stansted airport early on Thursday.

The group said people on the flight were told it was going to Baghdad, making it the first deportation flight into south or central Iraq from the UK.

And, these 39 are not the first.

According to Britain’s interior ministry, 632 people were deported to northern Iraq between 2005 and 2008.

Geert Wilders wins his case against Britain’s ban

The truth-telling Dutch politician Geert Wilders, whom we’ve written about many times, can now be allowed to enter Great Britain, the Telegraph reports.

Wilders challenged the decision by then home secretary Jacqui Smith which led to him being turned back at Heathrow Airport.

The ruling by the Asylum and  Immigration Tribunal means the head of the Freedom Party, who is accused of Islamophobia, could now be allowed into the country.

He was due to show his short film Fitna, which criticises the Koran as a ”fascist book”, at the House of Lords in February.

But Ms Smith said his presence had the potential to ”threaten community harmony and therefore public safety”.

It’s a sign of how far Britain has fallen that the normally sensible Telegraph calls Wilders a “far-right Dutch politician” in its sub-headline. Wilders objects to Muslims taking over western societies, and for that he is branded “far-right.” Oh well, Ann and I have been called the same thing; nowadays it’s a badge of honor. But I don’t think the Washington Times or Washington Examiner, which are somewhat equivalent to the Telegraph, would label us far-right.